Merle Haggard’s warning to haters: ‘Karma’s coming’

Along with generations of music lovers, my heart sank when I heard that Merle Haggard had died this week on his 79th birthday at Shade Tree Manor, his rambling, tile-roofed hacienda overlooking 700 acres of oak-studded pasture land just outside of the Sacramento Valley town of Redding.

I’d interviewed him on the phone just last April, before his concert at Marin Center, and

Merle Haggard, who turned 78 earlier this month, has aged and mellowed since he expressed the anger and frustration of many working people when he wrote ‘Okie from Muskogee.’ (Photo by Myriam Santos)

I’m especially grateful now that he’s gone that I did. As we all know, Haggard became famous in 1969 for “Okie from Muskogee,” his proletarian put-down of protesters and pot smokers. A 1990 New Yorker profile had only one word in its headline, “Ornery,” adding to his irascible outlaw image. But the opposite turned out to be true when I spoke to him. As I wrote in my column then, he was the most cordial, congenial and candid interview I’d done in a long while.

At one point, he was talking about a new album and a song he’d written for it, “Karma’s Coming,” that’s critical of the government’s hurtful immigration policies. Then he told me a story that takes on an even greater resonance now, during this era of intolerance and incivility by Donald Trump and his angry, white supporters.

Merle said he’d driven into his friendly neighborhood gas station one day, the same one he’d been going to for 20 years. And when the owner didn’t come out to wash his windshield, a courtesy he’d always extended to his faithful customers, he went inside to ask what was up. The new owner, a Middle Eastern man in a turban, was behind the counter. When Merle asked him if he was going to honor his longtime customers and wash their windows the way the former owner had, he looked out at Merle’s car and then back at Merle and snapped, ”What’s wrong with your hands?”

Merle told him he didn’t appreciate that kind of rudeness, saying, “You’re gonna run off your old customers. And you’re messing up my country.” Those words had barely escaped from his lips when the new owner replied testily, “It’s not your country.”

Merle’s reaction to that surprised me. Rather than bringing out the fightin’ side of him, an older, wiser, more tolerant side emerged.

“I suddenly realized he was right,” he told me. “It’s really not my country. It should be everybody’s. According to the creeds we’ve written, everyone in the world has the right to come here. But we don’t give people much slack, and we’re gonna suffer from some of the great mistakes we’ve made. Karma’s coming.”